English Civil War Casualties

A gaming essential for me is casualty figures.  I always used to remove figures to show casualties.  But I always used to have a lot of single based figures to move around though...just in case I ever wanted to play skirmish games.  For this reason I kept many figures individually based.

I have come to realise that skirmish games just are not my thing. I like to recreate battles, the larger the better!  It must be an age thing, but during my game turn moving single figures has become more and more irritating, especially those in pike blocks. Figures falling over, pikes coming adrift, armies taking forever to move etc. So I now like to base large. I like to base as many figures as I can on a base as long as it gives enough flexibility to recreate formations on the board without having to use a marker saying 'square' and such like.

So with this in mind. I need to show casualties. I have found these bases superb. I use them for my ancients and now I'll be using them for English Civil War too. The figures are from Warlord Games, the bases are from Forgeworld.  With the dials I can keep track of casualties during the game and also those in the current turn.

So I can retain the ubiquitous blobs of cotton wool for disorder or a multitude of other things, but casualties can now be shown like this.

I tried not to go too overboard with blood and gore but this particular figure (above) needed something to indicate his spectacular unfortunate demise.

Some of these figures would make a great vignette to be shown with surgeons or body robbers and such like.

Not the happiest of fellows (Can also be used for constipation vignettes!)

(For my own note - this closer pic and the following used the macro S1 setting but no flash - just ceiling light on). I really must go on a photography course or something!

Anyway, these casualties should be enough to supplement my painted completed units to date. More battle units are needed...and hopefully in the next day or so another will be completed. Painting inspiration gained by a visit to Broughton Castle today should lend more speed to the brush...watch this blog! :-)